


I am Never Without

by Onlymystory



Series: Courage Don't Desert Me [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt Yusuf Al-Kaysani, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, and making you cry over Joe, because is there anything more torturous, honestly this is a lot of sex and misunderstandings, than sex where one doesn't think he's loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25714219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onlymystory/pseuds/Onlymystory
Summary: Sometimes, when it is early in the morning and he is alone with his thoughts, he allows himself a reprieve. To imagine what it would be to keep Nicolo. To have him and to be his, utterly, completely.He thinks about the way he’s memorized Nicolo’s movements, can predict where a blow will land or his touch will fall by watching the muscles in his arms. He knows the softness of Nicolo’s hair, the way Nicolo gasps and bares his throat when he’s riding Yusuf, overwhelmed by his own pleasure.He thinks about the way he cannot predict what Nicolo will taste like. It always changes, so varied is his Nicolo’s palette. He wonders what stories might be there, what things they might try together if they were not limited to these fleeting moments.Yusuf thinks these things and he acknowledges in his quiet thoughts, that he is irrevocably in love with Nicolo di Genova.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Courage Don't Desert Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865062
Comments: 26
Kudos: 513





	I am Never Without

**Author's Note:**

> This is the continuation of #4 in my 5 Times Joe gave the most romantic speech ever story. I used that scene to start this, so you don’t have to read the other to understand this.  
> The first story is kind of mutual pov and sappy as shit. This is predominantly Joe pov and angsty as fuck. Happy endings because it’s 2020, why the fuck would I write anything without a happy ending when the world is its own shitshow.  
> For a history major, I know surprisingly little about the Crusades. Unsurprisingly, as a white woman in America, what I do know is depressingly skewed. That said, I did my best to keep references vague and at the very least, make it clear this was not a holy war on both sides. (I mean, the fuckers in charge on Nicolo’s side didn’t really care about the holiness aspect either, they used that to get people to fight for them) but from Joe’s side, it would have been more about fighting the invaders. Especially in this, the first Crusade.  
> I’m doing my best to soak up as much information as possible so that I can do this amazing character justice. Atm, my ongoing headcanon is that I put Joe as from Tunisia. Canonically he’s from the Maghreb, which modern-day Tunisia is a part of. My assumption is that Joe is involved in the first Crusade because he’s a merchant and ends up fighting for one reason or another. I need to study more to assign a why he was there beyond having a trade that involved travel and perhaps the ability to gather information.  
> But seriously, if anything I write makes you go hey that’s actually not accurate from a North African Muslim perspective (past or present), please tell me. And I will correct it.  
> Takes place from 1108-1117.

Yusuf wakes up panting, though for once it’s for an entirely different reason. Usually, he dreams of Nicolo’s sword piercing his heart or lungs or stomach--never his throat--and within a day or so, they will meet again and the dream will become a reality. At this point, it’s starting to be somewhat entertaining more than anything else, but nine years is a long time to kill and be killed by the same man. 

This dream though...this dream is quite different. This one had them in bed, Nicolo wanton and pliant underneath him, Yusuf’s name falling from his lips in supplicant repetition.

He gets little time to dwell on the dream. Nicolo is at the well when Yusuf goes to fetch water, sword drawn and eyes wild. 

“You look bothered today,” says Yusuf in flawless Ligurian. “Something on your mind?”

“Why don’t you ever stay dead?” returns Nicolo in passable Tunisian. His command of the language has improved significantly since a few years ago when they realized that Nicolo spoke excellent Arabic, just not Yusuf’s dialect.

Sometimes, Yusuf reflects that things such as this, learning one another’s language, is not so normal. 

Even when one considers that they keep killing each other and returning to life. 

“Are you sure nothing else occupies your thoughts?” he asks of Nicolo. “Or perhaps it is not your thoughts that are occupied, but a more external part of you.” He leers boldly and parries against the emotional sweep of Nicolo’s sword. 

“You know naught of which you speak,” snaps Nicolo.

Yusuf thinks for a brief second about what he wants to do, then figures why not? The worst that happens from this is Nicolo kills him and well if you’ve been killed by a repressed Catholic once, you’ve been killed by one a thousand times.

He drops his sword to the ground.

Nicolo stops mid-swing, pulling his assault so he does not strike Yusuf. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“We can keep fighting if you want,” says Yusuf, pulling loose the knot around his belted pants. “Or we can try something new.”

“I don’t...I don’t know what you mean,” stammers Nicolo, though his face is flushed and his eyes follow Yusuf’s fingers. 

Yusuf does nothing more to his clothes. He wishes to extend an invitation. It is up to Nicolo to accept. That does not mean he can’t be persuasive. 

“No?” says Yusuf. ”So it was not you in my dreams this morning, writhing with need, begging me to take my fill of you? It was not you who’s skin glistened with sweat, after what must have been hours of fucking? For surely we would last hours, I have experience with your...stamina, for many years now. It was not you that kisses like an angel and fucks like a devil?” He never looks away from Nicolo as he speaks. “You were beautiful, Nicolo. In my dreams, you were beautiful. Here, in the light of day, you are like the sun breaking through my life’s fog.”

It works, so so well, because he’s barely finishing the words when Nicolo is on his knees, sword forgotten at his side, mouthing desperately at Yusuf’s cock as his hands tug away the clothing blocking his way. 

Nicolo’s mouth is the greatest blessing he has ever known.

Yusuf takes handfuls of Nicolo’s hair and pulls, forcing Nicolo to look up at him. A whine of displeasure falls from Nicolo’s lips as he struggles to get back to sucking Yusuf’s cock. “Look at me,” demands Yusuf. He may not get to look into Nicolo’s eyes in his dreams, but he will absolutely look his fill here. 

He knows he won’t last long at all, not when surrounded by the wet, hot, gorgeous heat that is Nicolo’s mouth. He feels like he’s been waiting years for this, like Nicolo is coming home, and isn’t that a bit of a thing to marvel at later. 

When he comes, he pulls Nicolo up and chases the taste of himself in Nicolo’s mouth. 

Nicolo is like a desperate, needy little thing, grinding almost frantically against Yusuf’s leg until he finds his own release. They kiss for long moments and then Yusuf feels the familiar cold of steel plunging into his stomach. He should be furious, should feel betrayed, but instead, he stabs a dagger through Nicolo’s heart and dies musing on what they might attempt the next time Nicolo feels a need to kill him.

This is going to be fun.

* * *

For a few years, Yusuf wants to laugh at the way Nicolo complicates everything. He seeks Yusuf out, wanting nothing but the pleasure of his touch, the next moment declaring that he is ‘not supposed to enjoy the pleasures of the world’. 

He never seems concerned about the fact that they are two men. Nervous at many times, uncertain about what he’s doing, but never who. Nicolo only seems to stick on the idea that he was supposed to give up worldly things to be a knight of God.

It is an unnecessary complication in their lives. 

It’s fun to fuck. It’s oddly entertaining to kill each other too. They get better at it. Practice their swordsmanship, learn new skills. 

Yusuf wonders sometimes, in the early weeks of this new development, if they can control the dreams at all. To a degree they can he learns, much to his delight. The dreams are triggered by one of them dying, he and Nicolo, or one of the strange women. But they get visions of everyone’s most recent hours in the dreams, so he can, in a way, choose what images he shares if he tries. 

He considers that this is unfair to these strange women if they can see them as well, but after a few visions of that duo in the throes of passion, Yusuf thinks they are not overwhelmingly perturbed by pleasure.

He wonders if he can teach Nicolo through his dreams. 

Nicolo barely undresses them when they meet, spends half the time rubbing against him as though it’s enough. 

So Yusuf tests these dreams. He lies naked in his bed and takes his time with himself, doing all the things he likes and he lets Nicolo’s name ring out when he comes. He does this four nights in a row, until the dreams come again. The cobra woman dies in this one, struck by someone faster, before he gets a vision of Nicolo. Nicolo’s hand is tentative on his prick, but he seems to be stroking and exploring. 

When they meet again after it--when Nicolo comes looking for him, he strips them with determination, if not confidence. Nicolo’s hand moves in the same pattern that Yusuf has worked in each of the previous dreams, and he grins against Nicolo’s lips as he comes.

He keeps teaching. Nicolo never says a word about it, never acknowledges what he sees in these dreams, but he makes it clear that he listens.

In time, Yusuf no longer bothers to use the dreams. He speaks Nicolo’s language and makes his demands known in person, to very satisfactory results.

* * *

Nicolo has a tendency to seek Yusuf out the morning after a dream. Sometimes, if Yusuf is very lucky, Nicolo doesn’t even wait for the light of the sun, pleading his name at the door as the moon shines at his back.

He never seems sure of himself, never seems to have a plan. 

Nicolo will fall to his knees and place Yusuf’s arms in his hair.

He’ll waste not even a breath with hello, kiss Yusuf until he’s gasping for air, shove a hand down Yusuf’s pants and jerk him off in quick desperate motions, panting into Yusuf’s throat when Yusuf gets his wits about him enough to get a hand on Nicolo in return.

When he shows up at night, Nicolo never seems able to even hint at what he wants, repeating nothing but pleas and Yusuf’s name, stripping them both as they touch.

On those nights, Yusuf kisses Nicolo over and over, fucks him slow and gentle and lingering, calls him darling and beloved and mine in languages Nicolo has yet to learn.

Yusuf worries early on, that Nicolo only wants to be fucked in the dark, that he’s justifying something out of the light of day. But such worries are soon put to rest. There are afternoons when Yusuf will come home to find Nicolo leaning in the doorway, a teasing smile on his lips and a devilish look in his eyes. 

Nicolo will undress slowly on those days, watch as Yusuf pleasures himself, refuse to touch him until he looks his fill, then pushes him back into the bed and rides him in slow, punishing movements.

Those times, those are Yusuf’s favorites. These are the moments when Nicolo seems to forget everything but them, moments when Yusuf knows he has fallen in love, moments he wonders if Nicolo could want more than this.

But he also hates these days. When Nicolo is finished, when he’s slid off Yusuf’s body, he doesn’t linger on these days. There are no moments of quiet conversation, of practicing languages and learning. Nicolo doesn’t fall asleep so Yusuf can steal a few moments to quietly sketch his face.

No, on these days, Nicolo seems most at war with himself and draws his sword from the floor in haste, swearing in a language Yusuf no longer wants to understand. He seeks death like a madman on these days, as though he cannot wait to escape Yusuf. 

The endless war in his heart rages on.

* * *

He’s not sure why Nicolo kills him now. It’s not for the flimsy excuse of a holy war, the reasons Nicolo came here in the first place. If Nicolo still believed in this war, he would have given up on Yusuf. He would return to the battlefield, slaughter thousands as he dodges death.

Does Yusuf die at Nicolo’s hand because he is hated so? For being Muslim? Brown? A man?

Does he die because Nicolo hates him or because Nicolo hates himself?

He knows why he still wields the blade. It’s what Nicolo wants. Fucking and killing keep them together, so Yusuf will continue to strike with his sword, though his hands were made for better things.

There is no holiness in this for his people. They had trade and conversation and prosperity. It is Nicolo’s people who became greedy. Who wanted wealth and power and the sense of conquering nations. Who seize trade routes and treasure and export while they tell their people this is God’s calling. 

Yusuf picked up the sword when his trade was impacted, when he, as others could see that they now had a duty if they were to recognize their home in the future.

He wants to know why Nicolo still kills him, but he’s terrified of the answer.

* * *

Yusuf dreams more of the others. Of the two women who ride horses across great plains and are victorious in battle.

They get up from deadly blows and live when others don’t and he wonders if they are like Nicolo and himself. Do they evade death without trying?

He wants to ask Nicolo about this, wants to know he’s not slowly going mad.

But if he asks and Nicolo is not having these same dreams, if Nicolo only sees him, he might be thought mad after all. Or worse, Nicolo might want to leave, to seek out these women that don’t tempt him from his vows. Yusuf isn’t ready for that, not ready to lose Nicolo, so he stays silent.

* * *

Sometimes, when it is early in the morning and he is alone with his thoughts, he allows himself a reprieve. To imagine what it would be to keep Nicolo. To have him and to be his, utterly, completely. 

He thinks about the way he’s memorized Nicolo’s movements, can predict where a blow will land or his touch will fall by watching the muscles in his arms. He knows the softness of Nicolo’s hair, the way Nicolo gasps and bares his throat when he’s riding Yusuf, overwhelmed by his own pleasure.

He thinks about the way he cannot predict what Nicolo will taste like. It always changes, so varied is his Nicolo’s palette. He wonders what stories might be there, what things they might try together, if they were not limited to these fleeting moments.

Yusuf thinks these things and he acknowledges in his quiet thoughts, that he is irrevocably in love with Nicolo di Genova. 

Perhaps this then is his torment. To love a man who will not love him back, a man who steals at pieces of Yusuf’s very soul, a sliver gone every time he cheats death.

At this rate, it will not be long before Yusuf loses his heart completely. If he has not relinquished it already.

* * *

They’ve been doing this for well on five years when Yusuf realizes he wants to stop. 

He is tired of killing Nicolo. 

He does not hate him anymore, hasn’t for a long time. He doesn’t like the feeling of Nicolo’s slick blood under his hands, doesn’t like the panic his heart feels when he wakes again and Nicolo is gone. His mind knows that he only has to worry if Nicolo is still there, motionless on the ground beside him, but it doesn’t help as much as it should. 

He is not so tired of violence, does not wish for a life of immortal peace, but he is tired of killing Nicolo.

The next time Nicolo comes, Yusuf stops him before the clothes come off. 

He throws his sword to the ground, makes a show of his other weapons following the same path.

“What are you doing?” asks Nicolo, his eyes wide with confusion.

“There can only be one death today,” says Yusuf. “Only one, if you still choose to pick up your sword. I’m done.”

“Done?”

“I can’t keep doing this,” he says. “I won’t. So kiss me, Nicolo. Make love to me, with me, and end this misery.”

Nicolo’s sword is driven through him before he finishes his words, the look on Nicolo’s face one of fear and horror and desperation. 

So that’s it then, thinks Yusuf. He is not allowed only happiness. There must always be pain. He manages to reach out and place an unsteady hand on Nicolo’s cheek. “I love you, my darling,” he whispers in Ligurian, wanting no chance of Nicolo not understanding his words, and he kisses Nicolo as he dies for what seems like the thousandth time. 

Yusuf wakes alone, he always wakes alone.

He waits in the coming days for Nicolo to come back. Hopes for understanding. Wonders if it will just be Nicolo needing to take from him again.

The days become weeks.

Weeks pass into months.

His dreams of Nicolo fade away, only the women appear in them now. 

It hurts more than Yusuf thought possible, this hell that he cannot escape.

* * *

I t takes nearly two years for Nicolo to appear at this door again. Yusuf sees Nicolo and he loves him and he hates him and he loves him yet again.

For the first time in years, Yusuf is the one to draw his sword. He strikes Nicolo down, again and again, wishing it would take and then sobbing as he waits for him to wake, pleading in every language he knows to let him live. 

Nicolo lets him, dies repeatedly until he seems to decide it’s enough. He wakes and he kisses Yusuf and blood smears between them. 

Yusuf kisses him back, lets Nicolo beg against his skin, over and over. He knows Nicolo is removing their clothes, alternates between helping him and getting lost in the taste of his own personal hell. The first time they don’t even make it any farther than the blood strewn mess just inside the doorway. Nicolo lowers himself onto Yusuf and rocks in shaky motions, his kisses anguished and his movements desperate.

Yusuf drives his own body upward, his fingernails scrape down Nicolo’s back and he wonders what he will do if Nicolo leaves him again. 

When they finish, Nicolo drags them both to the bed, takes his time with Yusuf and Yusuf returns the favor, keeping his Nicolo on edge for ages before relinquishing.

And after they've fucked in a multitude of ways, few words but those of pleasure and pleas, Yusuf finds himself more frustrated than ever when Nicolo only rests a few minutes before reaching for his sword on the floor. He shoves Nicolo away, not wanting him in his bed any longer. 

“Yusuf?” asks Nicolo in confusion.

“After all this time, you still want me dead,” he spits out.

Nicolo starts crying, “You’re not in my dreams anymore, you live and I don’t see you”, and Yusuf hasn’t seen Nicolo in his either. 

Nicolo’s rising to his feet, reaching for him, begging for understanding. 

He’s aware that they could just stay together, rather than this killing to stay in dreams, but Nicolo doesn’t seem to be there yet, so Yusuf puts a knife in Nicolo’s hand as he presses the tip of another to Nicolo’s throat. “I am not the one leaving,” he says gently, tears in his own eyes, “but I will stay in whatever way you need.” 

Nicolo’s sobbing and Yusuf barely needs to move the knife, not with the way Nicolo is throwing himself on it. In the end, Yusuf has to put more effort into holding Nicky’s hand and adding pressure so it can reach his own heart, feeling like it’s pierced double today.

He dies in agony and wishes he won’t wake up.

But he does. He wakes as always. He turns and looks for Nicolo as always. 

And as always, he is alone.

* * *

Somehow, at a time that Yusuf isn’t sure he could pinpoint no matter how hard he tried, Yusuf stopped being able to say no to Nicolo. To his Nicolo.

He is so, so very tired of dying. He’s more tired still of feeling Nicolo’s blood on his hands, of feeling his life slip away. It doesn’t matter that they are both alive a moment later. When they wake from death, Nicolo will leave him, until the next time his body is needed.

It hurts more than anything in this world ever could. 

And yet, like a glutton for pain, he opens his door and his heart to Nicolo every time. 

Is this his punishment then? That he knows of the possibility of great love, of a passion that stirs the very fires of the earth, yet never be able to keep it in his grasp?

He thinks he’d rather die than live forever like this, but Allah has not seen fit to grant such a desire.

Eventually, in early 1117, it’s too much for him. 

Nicolo appears in his doorway on a morning in early spring. “Please,” he begs.

And Yusuf thinks once more. Once more he will let Nicolo in. And then he will say no. He will call an end to whatever torture this is. Perhaps if he has the strength to say no, he can find the strength to depart this life and depart this hell.

Yusuf takes his time worshipping Nicolo as the sun slowly rises in the sky. He bites as much skin as he can reach, soothes with his lips, then bites and sucks again, until Nicolo is littered with so many bruises his healing can’t keep up. Yusuf leans in and kisses Nicolo, harsh and brutal and desperate. “Love me,” he wants to say. Wants to demand. “Love. Me.”

The words fail to come, so he kisses Nicolo again and reaches for the oil that sits permanently next to his bed. 

“Please,” begs Nicolo. He is always the most at Yusuf’s mercy when he starts babbling in a mix of Ligurian and Tunisian, his lips full of nothing but praise for Yusuf’s touch. “Please,” says Nicolo now. “Fuck me so I can finish this torment for the both of us. Fuck me and I will keep away from you, I will find the strength.”

Yusuf gazes down at this man, this man he has spent two decades killing and half of that fucking and he thinks no. No one deserves this torture.

So he says what he perhaps should have said years ago. “No. No, my Nicolo.” Yusuf leverages himself off of Nicolo, moves to curl his knees against his chest, and leans into the cool stone wall behind him. The sensation is just enough to ground him.

“Please don’t make me do this,” he begs.

Nicolo’s face turns to that of stricken horror. “I have forced myself upon you...I made…”

Yusuf shakes his head. “I have given myself freely. I have never known how to say no to you, how to push you away. But I can’t. Kill me if you must, perhaps this time it will finally take. But I cannot do this anymore. I cannot keep touching you knowing that I love you with a fire that is all-consuming and you do not love me in return.” Yusuf’s voice shakes in his tears and he begs Allah for the strength to continue. “I can’t feel myself in you and know that for all these moments of heavenly joy, you still seek death in the end.”

“Yusuf please,” begs Nicolo, kneeling up and pressing kisses into his shoulders, his neck, his hair. “Please don’t leave me. God will not let me die but I cannot imagine living without you.”

Yusuf lifts his head, leans in for what may be the last kiss. He kisses softly, tenderly, memorizing the feel, the taste, the touch of Nicolo’s lips. Remembering the scent of his skin. It is difficult to taste much beyond the saltiness of tears, but for a moment, he tries. 

“Stay,” he begs in a last desperate plea. Prays on the slimmest of hopes that Nicolo will listen. “Stay with me. Make a home and a life, how ever touched by Allah, and however long it may be. Stay my Nicolo. Stay with me.”

“Stay?” asks Nicolo.

“Stay,” insists Yusuf. “Put down your sword against me. Take it up only against those who would do us harm. You seek me in your dreams, but I am here. I am flesh and blood before you and I am here, Nicolo. You do not have to settle only for my ghost.”

So he does. 

Nicolo stays. 

* * *

That night it is Yusuf’s turn, for the first time in this decade of back and forth, to be the one who is wanton and desperate, and clinging to Nicolo, begging him to move harder, harder, until he can no longer recognize his own body, so intertwined are they.

_ And for Nicolo, as he moves, he cries at the realization that for years, he has allowed himself to be satisfied with a cheap copy, a wisp of the beauty that is his Yusuf, when the reality has been in plain sight for so long. _

_ He will never make the mistake of losing his love for an imitation, for a fleeting dream, ever again.  _

_ For he is Yusuf’s and Yusuf is his and so shall they be forevermore.  _

**Author's Note:**

> That last bit in italics was my attempt to give you a glimpse at Nicky's thoughts. I feel like I will probably write this from Nicky’s perspective at some point, though when that is I’m not sure. I have a million wips for these two and yet every time I finish one, a new plot bunny takes hold.  
> 


End file.
